


To Take Arms Against The Purple Sea

by weakinteraction



Category: The Instrumentality of Mankind - Cordwainer Smith
Genre: Gen, Robots, Telepathy, Transformation, canon-typical weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 18:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20511512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: A loyal Subchief of the Instrumentality has a secret, and a new assignment.





	To Take Arms Against The Purple Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).

I.

The two inhabited worlds of Teegarden's Star could not have been more different to one another.

The outermost planet, called at the time of this story Averdan -- though in the latter years of the Rediscovery of Man it gained as many names as the reconstructed cultures had words for "paradise" -- had an abundance of all that made life pleasant. Lucky were the Go-Captains whose planoforming journey took them to that fabled world-girdling pleasure palace, many the Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality whose visits were extended far beyond what was necessary for the performance of their duties.

The inner planet, Sellarist, a disc that skipped rapidly across Averdan's night sky and was even faintly visible in the red-orange daylight, was a different matter entirely. The world was almost entirely covered by an ocean. The only occupants were a small number of researchers probing the exotic biochemistry of its primordial ocean, and their underpeople assistants and servants, frequently forced to take shelter against the storms that buffeted their research stations and wrecked their experiments, unable to go outside without the protection of triple-layered suits.

II.

Uzae Fidet was a Subchief of the Instrumentality, one who in his first century had already served with distinction in a number of offices across the worlds of Man. Although his one- and two-parents had been of humble background, he had fulfilled the destiny given to him by the computers that had programmed his birth to the fullest extent. There were even whispers among his fellow Subchiefs that he might one day ascend to the ranks of the Lords of the Instrumentality themselves, though Uzae, as was only proper, always refused to countenance such a prospect.

Uzae Fidet was also a man with a great and terrible secret. He had, indeed, been successful in his designated bureaucratic career, risen to the notice of many, his name become a watchword for careful, thorough work and bold, daring action when it was required. But there had been a mistake, an error, when his birth was programmed. He had been born with a mind so acute, telepathic senses so sharp, that in another life he might have been the greatest of pinlighters. Even in his crib, he could spiek, after a fashion, to his one-parents, his every primitive need and basic instinct projecting directly into their minds. When he was hungry, they felt as though they had been starving for days; when he was tired, they felt utter exhaustion. But when he gurgled with joy at some new experience, they felt unalloyed bliss. And as he slept, incomprehensible dreams lapped against their minds.

His one-parents should have reported such a terrible mistake in programming to the proper authorities, but they did not. Perhaps their unique bond with the child led them to such disloyalty to the Instrumentality, or perhaps they had simply waited so long to be permitted a child that they would not have given him up for any reason. They recognised the danger, and as he grew, even when he was only a toddler, his mind casting forth both tantrums and endless curiosity in turn, they taught him how to suppress his talents. When the time came for him to pass into the care of his designated two-parents, he had mastered the art so well that they did not have to be brought into the conspiracy -- something his one-parents had long feared might be required, for who was to say that their successors would not act properly and report him?

III.

Uzae Fidet was sent to Teegarden's Star by the Lady Astarte, who took particular interest in near-lost arts of science and engineering -- years earlier, she had overseen the damming of the middle-sea, against the grave scepticism of many of her fellow Lords and Ladies, though when the project was successful they all avowed that they had been certain it would be successful.

She received Fidet in her offices, high in the walls of Earthport, its great panoramic window overlooking Meeya Meefla. Uzae had never seen such a view before, and for a moment he thought that he must appear to have taken leave of his senses.

"Subchief Fidet," the Lady said. "Though your career is surely not yet a quarter over, you have already served the Instrumentality faithfully and well."

He bowed low. "My Lady does me great honour to speak so highly of me. My wish is only to serve."

"As is only proper," she said, sitting down at her desk. She made no sign or motion to indicate to Fidet that he should take the seat opposite her, and so he remained standing. Looking up, she said, "It has been decided that you are to be rewarded. You shall visit Averdan."

"My Lady, I need no reward other than the--"

"Understand, Subchief Fidet, that the Instrumentality decides what is best for all Mankind," the Lady Astarte said, firmly but not harshly. "You do count yourself a part of Mankind, do you not?"

"Of course, my Lady."

"Then you acknowledge that it is right and proper that I should send you wherever it is deemed best."

Uzae Fidet nodded in acquiescence.

"Good," the Lady said. "You must fix in your mind very firmly that you are going to be rewarded for your service to the Instrumentality with a long sojourn on Averdan. Think of all the delights you have heard of in that place, what it will be like to experience them for yourself. Think of what you might choose to do there, how you might spend your time."

Later, Fidet would wonder if the Lady had been using powers of hypnotic suggestion with her voice to make the images that came into his mind so vivid. As he thought -- of the beautiful waterfalls he had heard so much about, of concerts in an open air amphitheatre under the setting sun, of baser pleasures too -- the Lady Astarte pressed a single button on her desk.

"There," she said, a moment later. "Now we can discuss the real reason for your journey."

"I'm sorry, my Lady, I do not understand."

"Your mind has just been scanned for transfer to a robot duplicate of you that has already been constructed. It is that robot duplicate which will travel to Teegarden's Star as an honoured passenger, dining with the Go-Captain before departure, afforded all the honour due to a Subchief of the Instrumentality and more. Very visibly present on Averdan, enjoying all the sorts of things you were just imagining, and more."

"So, then, my Lady, I myself am not to travel?"

"Oh, no, you will travel too," the Lady Astarte said. "The purpose of the robot is merely to make sure that people believe they know where you are. You yourself will, in fact, travel to Sellarist, as a new laboratory assistant for the research team there."

"I am sorry, I am not trained--"

The Lady waved her hand dismissively. "You do need to be. They expect their underpeople to need everything explained to them when they first arrive."

Fidet blinked rapidly. In his confusion, he forgot himself and said bluntly, "Underpeople?"

The Lady Astarte clapped her hands in something almost like delight. "Yes! You will be in disguise, as a catman."

"If that is your wish," Fidet said, though his mind recoiled at the idea. "But I must confess, I know not why you wish me to go there."

"Nor do I, Subchief Fidet," the Lady said, "and that is the problem. I perceive that something is very wrong with the efforts on Sellarist, that the researchers are hiding something. I want you to find out what, and then report back to me. _Only_ me."

It took Fidet just a moment to understand the implication, even without risking using his telepathic talents. Whatever was going on, the Lady suspected the involvement of some of the other Lords and Ladies. The idea that the Instrumentality might be divided amongst itself, its leaders furthering their own agendas without one another's knowledge, was anathema. And yet if such was the case, it was surely his duty -- and even more so, hers -- to bring the matter to a close, as subtly and swiftly as possible.

IV.

The transformations the Lady's private surgical team wrought was rapid, but not instant. Nor were they painless.

Skin became fur, and at first it felt as though every inch of it crawled. The whiskers that sprouted from his cheeks were exquisitely sensitive.

Hands and feet became paws, nails claws. He scratched himself and watched the blood well up, and even though the changes were only on the surface, so it was still the same blood he had always had, it felt unfamiliar to him.

Worst and best of all was the tail, a wholly new part of him, and yet once he had begun to move around with it, something that felt natural and right -- agile and graceful, a necessary counterbalance to his every movement. He swished it back and forth across the floor as he walked, and some instinct he had never before possessed knew that the other catpeople would be impressed -- would, if only they were there to watch him, be driven wild with desire, or envy, or both.

Uzae Fidet, Subchief of the Instrumentality, was no more.

C'Harrison was born.

V.

There were no separate accommodations for Underpeople on the planoforming ships in those days; for the greatest part, only those used as personal servants travelled between the Worlds of Man, and if they did so, they travelled with those in whose retinue they served. Other Underpeople were bred or decanted as required in the places they were needed or desired.

For a moment before the passengers were safely stowed, C'Harrison caught sight of himself -- or rather the man he had once been: Uzae Fidet, now in fact a robot. Unaware of what had transpired in the Lady Astarte's office after the mind scan had been taken, the robot saw nothing special in C'Harrison, looking at him with the same mixture of curiosity and disdain that the other passengers demonstrated.

VI.

Sellarist was just as harsh a world as C'Harrison had been led to believe. His new masters and mistresses, a team of four scientists, spent almost all of their time in cramped conditions on the largest island, recording and analysing data from stations across the planet that floated in the iridescent purple sea, between the strange spongy mats of seamoss that drifted in the oceans. C'Harrison and the other Underpeople -- three other catpeople, two dogwomen and a turtleman -- were the ones sent out to repair the stations when, as often happened, they became clogged with the material. They had surface craft to use for the nearer ones, and a pair of ornithopters, although the maintenance of these against the depredations of the atmosphere was almost as great a task as that of the monitoring stations.

C'Harrison worked without complaint, earning the trust of his fellow Underpeople and the human crew alike. Whenever he saw Averdan in the sky, he would think of his other self, the robot who was pretending to be Uzae Fidet, and feel a pang of jealousy, followed by a surge of pride. He was serving the Instrumentality, both by helping with the research, and by finding out what the researchers were hiding for Lady Astarte.

He quickly determined that none of the others on the planet with him had psychic abilities, and began to probe their minds with his own. But there were no secrets to be found, at least not of the type that Lady Astarte wanted to know about. In the humans' minds there were petty rivalries and jealousies, unspoken attractions -- including, he realised with a start, to him, on the part of more than one of the scientists -- and all the other emotional and psychological upheavals that were to be expected from a small group at such close quarters. The Underpeople's minds were different: not truly simpler, as many said, but shot through with the inborn loyalty that they were programmed with.

They kept secrets, but none of them worth knowing. The part of C'Harrison that remained Uzae Fidet began to wonder if his mission would be a failure.

VII.

Eventually, C'Harrison was trusted to make at least simpler repairs by himself.

It was when he was piloting the surface craft -- a small hydrofoil fitted with a solar-electric drive -- to a nearby station that it happened.

_Man of Earth,_ came a far-off spieking voice.

At first, he ignored it, believing himself to be suffering a hallucination, brought on by the strange environment.

_Man of Earth, I know you can feel my mind as I can feel yours._

It was true: he could feel a presence. But it was not the presence of any of the others: the mind felt different and, moreover, he doubted that they would have been able to shield themselves from him for so long even.

Off the bow of his hydrofoil, a sinuous shape arced out of the water and back in. As he stared, it was joined by more. Soon, the hydrofoil was surrounded on all sides. The murky water did not allow many details to be made out, and they moved too fast as they darted through the surface, but the impression he had was of the dolphins of Old Earth. Which was impossible; the frothing sea was rich in unicellular life, but the mats that floated on its surface were the most complex multicellular forms, and even they were really only large colonies, rather than true organisms.

He brought the craft to a stop, still far from the station he was supposed to be visiting. He had at least an hour before anyone who came from the island to investigate could reach him, and that only if they were monitoring his progress closely. If he started on his way again soon, they would probably only think he had encountered a minor difficulty.

The things that were not dolphins surrounded him in a circle. He could sense minds in all of them, but only one that could spiek.

The creature directly facing him jumped half-out of the water, balancing itself for a moment, long enough for C'Harrison to make out the features of its face. Human-like features.

_I am F'Allan,_ the creature spieked.

_You are an Underperson,_ Uzae Fidet, who was also the Underperson C'Harrison himself, replied.

_Yes._

And the secret of Sellarist began to unravel.

VIII.

The first scientific team to visit the planet, hundreds of years ago, had included among its number a low level telepath, one barely able to spiek but sensitive to the pulsing rhythms of the thinking mind. And she had felt such rhythms, not only from her compatriots but from the planet itself -- somehow, somewhere, deep in the ocean, the mass of life -- though each individual component of it was simple -- had come together to form a vast, unified intelligence.

An intelligence that had been alone for an epoch or more, now made aware by that fleeting psychic contact, of the existence of other life, of an existence far wider than it had ever dreamed of. Other worlds, other life in myriad different forms.

The planet-mind knew many new emotions that day. Most of all, it knew _hate_. It had been perfectly content in its previous existence, slowly pondering its own biochemistry, musing on philosophy. Now, it knew that it was trapped, and it hated the humans who had brought it that knowledge.

The scientist's brain was not burnt out instantly. For years in planet-time -- a few months, as reckoned on Earth -- she had been more or less lucid, though babbling the thoughts she could read in the once-dreaming, now-woken ocean.

The other scientists had worked desperately to find a solution. Among them was a skilled geneticist, the creator of the fish-people. They were given acute psychic powers, but not enough to batter back against a mind that was a whole world, and over the generations, the trait did not breed true. Now they roamed the oceans, the likes of F'Allan suppressing the anathematic mind as best they could, but unable to wholly defeat it. It was limited to the depths now, where, but remained an ever-present threat to the sanity of all on the planet. And, the fear was, all those on Averdan too, if the creature of pure loathing ever learned how to stretch its mental influence.

IX.

_This is our task,_ F'Allan explained. _Our destiny. And yours._

_Mine?_

_Your mind shines brighter than mine,_ F'Allan said. _Than any other. Bright enough to outshine the darkness once and for all._

_I ... I was given a task. To find out the truth about what was happening on this world._

_And now you have._

_But ... I was to report back. To a Lady of the Instrumentality, no less._

_And when you report back your success in vanquishing the creature, I am sure she will be suitably grateful._

_What must I do?_

_Go _down_,_ F'Allan spieked. _We will escort you._

_I must--_

C'Harrison stopped and thought. His mind was a mass of contradiction. That part of him which was human, which valued his own survival, resisted the idea. That part of him which had picked up the atavisms of the cat he had become wanted nothing more than to catch the fish.

But part of him was a loyal Subchief of the Instrumentality. And he knew that he had a great task to perform. It might not be the one that he had been sent to do, but it was the one that was needed.

X.

He jumped into the water.

And sank.

He carried on sinking for some time, flailing his arms and fighting to hold his breath just a little longer, even as he fell downwards towards the very core of the planet, as all things must.

He was too heavy somehow, that was why he was falling. Should he have removed some of his equipment before he leaped?

Finally, he was unable to hold his breath any longer. The air in his lungs escaped in a rush of bubbles which quickly floated up through the purple murk and out of his limited vision.

And yet he did not drown.

XI.

I _am the robot._

_Yes,_ F'Allan spieked back.

_I did not know a robot could spiek,_ he said.

_Nor did we._ F'Allan twisted in front of him, barely visible through the thick soup. _But the arts of the Instrumentality are subtle indeed._

Down they went, and down, down for hours, down into almost total darkness.

He could feel the mind now, feel its anger and hate and frustrated desire to destroy. It had been beaten back, over and over again from what he could feel, but it still remained, here deep in the ocean. This deep, it _was_ the ocean, there was no distinction.

He would confront it. In the end, there was no other choice.

XII.

Lady Astarte was entertaining the Lord Xoanon when the latest report from her team on Sellarist arrived. They had gone through the motions once again, played the game through to its conclusion, but to what end this time?

"You will forgive me, noble Lord, I must attend to this."

"I will indulge you in your secrets, my Lady. Though, you know, you shall have to tell me one day." And Lord Xoanon bowed and retreated.

He was right, Astarte knew, or if not him, one of the others of his generation, for she was coming to the end of her long life, just as Uzae Fidet had a few decades earlier: the real Uzae Fidet, that was, who had never become a Lord of the Instrumentality, but whose entire life -- "mistake" in programming and all -- she had orchestrated; the real Uzae Fidet, who had long ago visited Teegarden's Star for a month or two, even as the first of his robot duplicates believed that the real man had been the robot duplicate. If her long project to correct the mistake of allowing the exploration of the world in the first place was not successful soon, the secret of the Purple Sea of Sellarist would have to be passed to another to deal with. She would have to choose carefully who to confide in: not all the Lords and Ladies were equally far-sighted, and the thought that Sellarist could be abandoned, the sea left to dream its own dreams once more, was tempting even to her at times. She lacked confidence that her successor would necessarily understand the nature of the existential threat the world-creature posed.

She opened the report and her mind was put at rest. Now, she could let the past stay buried.

The four hundred and fifteenth "C'Harrison" had, finally, succeeded.


End file.
